Research Interests

My research focuses on the ways in which literary texts (and literary studies more generally) can be of social, cultural, pedagogical and individual use, among others in contexts of health and illness. To explore these potentials, I examine the multiple and unexpected affordances of metaphors and narratives. I am particularly curious about how metaphors and narratives engage with polar opposites, such as beneficial/harmful (e.g., illness metaphors, age stereotypes) and success/failure (e.g., aging). In my monograph from 2022, Metaphor in Illness Writing, I look into the creative strategies artists use to navigate these dualities and to explore them for their healing, therapeutic and reparative capacities.

My new research continues these interests in varied usability and binaries and focuses on political and cultural radicalization and polarization in the context of health. Abortion is a particularly insightful example because the discourses around abortion are often very binary (yes/no, pro-abortion/anti-abortion), even though the issue is actually highly complex. I explore how - that is, by which aesthetic means - radical positions are expressed on abortion. I focus on recurring metaphors, such as abortion is murder, as well as recurring narratives, like conversion narratives.

In a related project, I'm curious about reader responses to conversion memoirs on abortion, and I ask to what extent polarizing texts may stoke polarized reader responses. This research wishes to contribute to a better understanding of polarized discourses on health care issues by foregrounding the aesthetic factors of polarization.

I work with literary texts, autobiographical writing and visual media (e.g., films, TV series) and have long-standing experience with working across disciplines and at the intersections of academic fields, such as age studies, Narrative Medicine and Medical Humanities.

Keywords: American Studies, Medical Humanities, Narrative Medicine, Age Studies, uses of literature, metaphors, stereotypes, seriality, life writing, polarization, abortion. 

At SDU, I am the co-coordinator of the Narrative Medicine track in the Health department. More information on Narrative Medicine at SDU here.